Monument Type(s):

• BOUNDARY BANK (Early Saxon to Mid Saxon - 410 AD to 800 AD)
• DYKE (DEFENCE) (Early Saxon to Mid Saxon - 410 AD to 800 AD)
• FRONTIER DEFENCE (Early Saxon to Mid Saxon - 410 AD to 800 AD)

Summary

Scheduled Monument: A well preserved section of Offa's Dyke, the 8th century Mercian boundary bank, this stretch of the earthwork stands up to 2.5m high, and the western ditch remains partly visible.

Related records

Associated Finds: None recorded

Associated Events

• ESA8554 - 2018 Heritage assessment of Bryn Offa, Treflach, Shropshire by CPAT (Ref: 17/05791/FUL)

Description

Scheduling of section 90m east of Ty Gwyn revised in 2003 (formerly Salop 235, now 32610). Scheduling description:->

-> The monument includes the earthwork and buried remains of a section of the linear boundary known as Offa's Dyke 90m east of Ty Gwyn. Offa's Dyke generally consists of a bank, up to 3.5m high, with an intermittent parallel ditch and quarry pits in places. It was strengthened in some areas by additional earthworks, namely a berm between the bank and ditch and a counterscarp bank on the outer lip of the ditch. ->

-> In this section the Dyke runs for 740m from the road junction 350m north of Ty Gwyn to the edge of the workings of Llynclys Quarry. At the northernmost end of this section the Dyke has been reduced by the construction of the road, but will survive as a buried feature. Beyond this, the Dyke runs downslope and across the head of a small dry valley as far as Blodwel Bank road. Here the Dyke is visible as a well-defined bank, up to 2.5m high, with a ditch and a slight counterscarp bank in the central section. To the south of Blodwel Bank road the Dyke is visible as a bank which takes the form of a commanding scarp. In the garden of Bryn Offa, the ditch has become infilled, but will survive as a buried feature and is included in the scheduling. ->

-> In the southern part of this section, the Dyke changes its profile to take account of the steep slope of the flank of the hill at this point. Here the bank is up to 1m high on its eastern side. To the west, the bank falls away steeply into the ditch, which has become largely infilled by landslip. A pronounced counterscarp bank is visible to the west of the ditch. A series of small quarry pits on the east of the bank provided further material for the bank's construction. These are visible as a series of shallow hollows up to 10m from the base of the bank itself. The quarry pits have been partly obscured by later ridge and furrow cultivation. Further sections of Offa's Dyke 20m to the north and across the valley beyond the quarries at Llynclys and the village of Porth-y-waen are the subject of separate schedulings. All fence posts, telegraph poles, road surfaces, and the garden rockeries and furniture of Bryn Offa are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath these features is included. <1>

Section photographed during aerial survey in 2009. <2><3><4>

A heritage assessment was undertaken in association with a planning application for proposed alterations and extensions at Bryn Offa, Treflach in 2018, which considered impacts on the setting of this scheduled sections of Offa's Dyke, which passes to the E of the dyke. ->

-> The existing record for the scheduled monument notes that in the vicinity of Bryn Offa the dyke is visible as a commanding scarp and that the ditch has become infilled in the garden of the house, though further to the south, where the profile is similar, the infilling is said to be owing to landslip. The first edition 25" Ordnance Survey map of 1875 is informative in that it records the scarp but no ditch is shown. There is actually very slight evidence of a ditch visible here and this falls outside the property boundary. The ditch in its present form is insufficiently wide or deep to have provided the material from which the scarp was constructed, hence the suggestion that the ditch had been infilled. However, there is a linear hollow on the upslope side of the dyke which has hitherto gone urn-noticed. This is likely to have been the main source of material. The size of the scarp is thus explained, despite the effective lack of more than a vestigial ditch on the western (lower) side of the dyke. The suggestion that the ditch has been infilled is therefore not necessarily correct, and it is possible that the existing earthworks reflect their original form. The scheduled area, the boundary of which constricts at Bryn Offa, appears to avoid the dwelling itself and therefore the proposed development. It seems likely that the original extent of the dyke earthworks lie outside the property boundary. <5>

Sources

Search results generated by the HBSMR Gateway from exeGesIS SDM Ltd.